Contest between two Democrats for 10th District Assembly seat getting down and dirty

Surrogates for the two Democrats battling for the 10th District Assembly seat — 7th District Assemblyman Michael Allen and San Rafael Councilman Marc Levine — have been hurling negative mailers like poisoned spears for several weeks now, and the conflict is escalating.

The gloves came off at the end of September with a mailer paid for by the California Democratic Party. The piece featured a photo of Levine attending the campaign kick-off for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in San Rafael earlier this year.

The headline on the piece read: "Marc Levine doesn't want you to know about the elephant in the room ... because the elephant in the room is Marc Levine." And it asked rhetorically: "What's next — campaign contributions from Republican special interests?"

Since then, the negative campaigning has snowballed.

Within the past two weeks an independent expenditure committee calling itself Family Farmers Working for a Better California sent out four pieces attacking Allen. The biggest contributors to the committee are the Western Growers Association, an agricultural trade association, and California Citrus Mutual, a citrus growers association. One mailer focused on the $3,000 fine levied against Allen in February 2011 by the Fair Political Practices Commission. The commission disciplined Allen for voting on matters in which he had a financial interest while he was a Santa Rosa planning commissioner.

Allen has said that he was unaware of the conflict of interest when he cast the vote that recommended the Santa Rosa City Council update its general plan. The update made development of a seven-acre parcel belonging to the Sonoma County Water Agency property possible. When Allen cast his vote, he was under contract with the water agency to work on behalf of that change. The Planning Commission voted 7-0 to approve the general plan update.

Allen said, "There was no need for me to vote. I didn't change the outcome."

Allen's campaign responded this week with a mailer that asserts, "Mark Levine is supported by developers and agribusiness polluters who are spending over $177,000 to get him elected."

Allen said the Western Growers Association has "been targeting certain legislators who they feel are very strong on both environmental issues and farm labor issues."

In a press release issued Wednesday, Sierra Club California, the legislative watchdog of the Sierra Club's California members, wrote: "The attacks launched against Michael Allen last week are the latest move by Western Growers in their statewide campaign targeting incumbents who have been leading voices in the State Legislature advocating for environmental protection and conservation."

Dave Puglia, a spokesman for the association, said, "Mr. Allen has shown in his legislative activities a complete disregard for the consequences of the policies he promotes on our economy."

Campaign finance reports filed with the California Secretary of State's office show that Family Farmers Working for a Better California also spent more than $137,000 in October to produce mailers opposing Assemblywoman Betsy Butler, a candidate for the 50th Assembly District that runs from Malibu and Santa Monica to West Hollywood. Western Growers Association strongly opposed Butler's AB 2346, the Farm Worker Safety Act of 2012, which would have ensured that water and shade are provided to California's farmworkers by making growers liable for heat-related illness. The legislation, which Allen voted for, was vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown.

Also this week, an independent expenditure committee backing Allen, Working Families Against Low Wage Jobs, which is funded by the Service Employees International Union, sent out a mailer warning that business interests want to make Levine their "corporate tool." Among other things, the mailer criticizes Levine for accepting campaign contributions from landowner Cal Pox Inc. after casting the deciding vote to approve the Target store in San Rafael.

Levine said, "There is no way that Allen can cry foul since he and his allies have been hitting me. I don't like independent expenditures, and I want to do more to clamp down on them as I have as a San Rafael council member."

David McCuan, an associate professor of political science at Sonoma State University, said the spending by the agricultural group may be helping to compensate for Allen's much larger campaign war chest. By the end of September, Allen had collected a total of $868,529 in campaign contributions while Levine had collected just $188,268.

McCuan said research shows that voters eventually get fed up with negative campaigning.

"But we don't know exactly when that point is," McCuan said. As a result, he predicts, "This is going to be a long, expensive negative campaign."